Mobile Nations Fitness Month Week 2: Nutrition!

It's February and you know what that means? Mobile Nations Fitness Month! That's when we all get together to get in shape, share tips and tricks and recipes for success, review amazing apps and accessories, give away great prizes, and have a ton of fun! This year we're doing it a little differently, though. We're doing weekly themes, and that means every week you'll have new and exciting challenges, and new chances to win!

Week 2: Nutrition!

You know the old saying, you are what you eat? It's a cliche because it's true. Food is what gets us going and makes us run. Eating the right foods can improve the way we look and feel, how we handle stress and how we make it through the day. Food is our fuel, and we want to make sure we give our bodies and minds the best fuel possible.

As part of fitness month, we'll be reviewing a bunch of great apps and accessories that can help motivate, track, and train us to eat better and smarter.We'll also be doing THREE cool contests!

Eating Clean contest

First is our Mobile Nations Eating Clean contest. Every day this week there'll be a thread in our health and fitness forums, and all you have to do to enter is tell us what you ate during the day. The idea is to get a little community pressure going so we all eat less junk food and more healthy, tasty meals and snacks. If you have a food tracker, a Withings scale, or any other device that helps you out, you can simply share your results each day!

This is a great way to keep us all motivated and accountable, and get a little healthy peer-pressure going! Plus, every day you enter is a chance to win a $20 gift certificate!

Nutrition MY Way contest

Second is our Nutrition MY Way contest. Just head on over to Nutrition MY Way thread in the forums and tell us how you use your mobile device, your BlackBerry or PlayBook, to eat healthier. What are your favorite apps? What are your go to accessories? We want to know! Tell it to us in the form of a story, like a blog post. We'll post the best entries on Friday, so get them in ASAP! Need more incentive? We'll pick one winner a week and send them a $100 gift certificate!

Comment to win contest

Last but certainly not least, leave a comment below telling us about your Mobile Nations Fitness Month goals and you'll be entered to win a Withings Wireless Scale! It's a great -- and super geeky! -- way to track your weight. You want to win this, so hurry up and leave a comment NOW!

Reader comments

Mobile Nations Fitness Month Week 2: Nutrition!

My goal is to bike and not take the bus, ever, for life. My brother thinks working and bussing it is exercise, not really. I do intend to solely BOYCOTT and NOT eat ANY seedless fruit or vegetables that are SUPPOSED to have seeds (anything that's a root isn't going to have seeds anyways, but it's flowers do!), because THOSE are Genetically Modified Organics, also known as GMO.

Those ARE NOT healthy and are basically harmful. You NEVER KNOW what shit they put into the plant during the time it was growing.

My diet is dialed in pretty well using the Warrior Diet by Ori Hofmekler. Read it on my BlackBerry with the Kindle app. I am looking to log 80 miles on the trail this month as part of my marathon training. I am almost 30 miles in, so I am on the right track. I have been using Endomondo because it gives me audio splits to help me push my pace a bit.

Seeing all of the apps getting posted here really helped me in deciding which apps to use to help me with my weight loss! It's great to see some new tracking apps and some exercise apps that keep working out everyday interesting!

I will be trying to control my portions when eating. I'm not out of shape but I am getting older and my metabolism isn't what it used to be. I'm still very active by going to the gym and plying sports, but I find that I eat a lot when I'm just bored or take more than I need when in sit down for a meal. So this month, and hopefully going forward, is all about portion control and smarter eating (ie, no more chips and dip at midnight while watching sports highlights!)

I'd like to get back into running. The holidays were hectic and I'd hurt my knee training, and between the two I've but on 20 more than I really would have liked. I'd like to see the folks at MyNetDiary offer a BB10 app, as well as either Endomondo (or Runtastic, or someone) on-par with the iOS and Android versions. Those would help.

The scale is a nice idea. At first I was hoping it was a good quality kitchen scale: that would be even more helpful, at least for me.

Unless you're really overweight (>20% body fat for men), you only need to eat "clean" to stay healthy. Cutting sugar is especially important.
If you workout regularly and are below 15% body fat for men, it doesn't matter that much, as long as you're not over-eating. Start tracking (myfitnesspal.com) if you want to know how much you should eat to stay at your current weight.
If you want to lose weight, lift heavy weights, eat more proteins and don't starve yourself, but work with a reasonable calorie deficit.
All those calories burning workouts are for maintenance, when you want to eat plenty and need to burn the extra calories, doing them on a calorie deficit, will just waste away your muscles and they take a long time to rebuild.

ok, nearly halfway into February and I am trying to put as many steps into my day as possible, and am back to packing fruit for my snacking at work. If I could move that scale pointer down another 5 pounds that would be superb.
I look at the scale in jumps of 5 pounds at a time. I have lost 10 since June and would like to lose another 10 to make me swimsuit happy.

So I guess my goals will not be your typical fitness goals, but I figured I'd share anyways. Hopefully I win something! So here they are:
By February 28, 2013 I WILL...
- Lose 5 lbs of bodyfat while maintaining my lean tissue bringing me down to a weight of 219 lbs
- add 10 lbs to my sumodeadlift bringing it up to 475 lbs
- add 10 lbs to my rack pull bringing it up to 555 lbs

Last but not least, by Feb 28, 2013 I will be able to do a round off into back handspring.

Hopefully that's not too much! Good luck with your fitness goals everyone and make sure their SMART GOALS! it helps out a lot!

Unfortunately not for BlackBerry (I'm hoping a side load will work for BB10), the ULTIMATE geeky solution for weight management is BodyBugg SP. It's a band that you wear on your arm that uses sophisticated algorithms and sensors to get a scary-accurate count on your calories burned in a day. The band will link with your smartphone and give you all sorts of information like activity and steps with the ability to set goals and calorie targets. It will show you graphs of your progress over the day so you can see when you are most active. Pretty sweet if you can afford it and use iOS or Android.

Losing (or gaining) weight is all about calories in and out. If you don't know what a calorie deficit is, you need to do some research because you might need to eat MORE to lose weight. If that statement sounds wrong, it's because you haven't done your research! The IS such a thing as a calorie MINIMUM.

I've been Paleo since April of last year, dropped from 210 to 155 pounds but have been stuck there for a few months. I just started Intermittent Fasting with a 6-hour eating window last week and started running at the gym - hoping to make it to 150 by the end of the month.

I'm so out of shape and I really know I need to lose weight but I don't know where to start! My life is so full of stress and I bought a elliptical used it a handful of times, but now its a dust collector and/clothes hanger.

Wash the clothes, dust off the elliptical, and toss out the excuses. I had the same problem with my treadmill. My friend always harassed me "Winners do what losers won't. Don't be a #%&*ing loser!" lol she has a way with words :-)

Im on p90x month #2, my goals for this month are to just bring it!!!. First month was building the base layer of muscles. I was in horrible shape. This month I expect to really pack on the strength and cut the fat now that Im able to do the workouts properly.

Going to try to lose as much weight as I can... 10lbs? Exercising regularly, almost every morning, and eating as healthy as possible! Have to cut down on pizza frequency unfortunately...! That will be the hardest part...

Goal this month is to eat a little more lean and get a little more stronger. I want to cut my daily calorie intake by about 150-200 calories and increase my fiber and protein intake. I want to hopefully drop half a % of body fat this month and increase my strength by atleast 10lbs with all my max lifts.

My goal is to gain weight. I'm around 143 lbs (maybe less because I'm just getting over the flu...), but I want to be 160 lbs. I work at a gym and I have a work out plan and support, but the hard part is affording the food I need to eat. Mass gainer is an option, but not very healthy - plus it's expensive. I have been eating a bit more and will keep doing so. I've gained about 5 lbs in the last 5 months or so. Slow and steady.
My goal for this month is to get back into work out harder (being sick and stuff) and hopefully gain a pound or two.

You don't need to count calories (which doesn't work well) or go on some fancy diet. Simply eat only whole, unprocessed foods and weight management falls into place. Plus you get the added benefit of feeling better and being healthier rather than just looking better. Sadly most Americans still have the wrong idea of what a healthy diet is due to what the government and medical professions have led us to believe in the last few decades.

Check out "The Great Cholesterol Myth" by Jonny Bowden and Stephen Sinatra for an example of the crap science many people still regard as fact. I have no affiliation with the book.

CrackBerry is in no way Affiliated with BlackBerry. We take pride in our unbiased content, however do occasionally receive free products from vendors that we review or discuss. For more info click here.